[R] portable R editor

[Michael Bibo]

Werner Wernersen <pensterfuzzer <at> yahoo.de> writes:

> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I have been dreaming about a complete R environment on my USB stick for a 
long time. Now I finally want to
> realize it but what I am missing is a good, portable editor for R which has 
tabs and syntax highlighting, can
> execute code, has bookmarks and a little project file management facility 
pretty much like Tinn-R has
> those. I like Tinn-R but it seems like there is only a very old version of 
Tinn-R which works standalone.

Hi Werner,

Three options:

I have previously posted about using Emacs + ESS on a USB stick: 
http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/R/Rhelp02/archive/107419.html

Tinn-R will work portably.  I have simply copied the installed Tinn-R folder 
from one machine to another on which I do not have administrator privileges 
and therefore cannot do a normal install.

Another option is Notepad++ (http://notepad-
plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm).  There is even a portable version available 
fom www.portableapps.com.  Andrew Redd has created (and is continuing to 
develop) NppToR (http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~aredd/site/?q=node/37) which 
provides syntax highlighting, code folding and code passing to R.  Notepad++ 
has a tabbed interface as well as add-ons including a file explorer, windows 
manager and multiclipboard manager.  It also allows for the recording of 
macros, and the instructions found at this blog 
(http://aztecpassage.blogspot.com/2007/11/load-new-file-from-template-in-
notepad.html) use Notepad++'s built-in capacity to run external tools to 
create new files from templates.


Michael Bibo
Queensland Health